Poll Position: Alter egos
We tend to focus on the flashy side of the super-hero business, but there’s no denying that secret identities are an integral part of the genre. Which brings us to this week’s question:
Discussion to follow!
We tend to focus on the flashy side of the super-hero business, but there’s no denying that secret identities are an integral part of the genre. Which brings us to this week’s question:
Discussion to follow!
In the spirit of last week’s question, which generated some great ideas and discussion, once again we bring ourselves to wonder what happens if we’re not who we think we are:
Discussion to follow! And since last week the suggestions were all actual good ideas and not inappropriate in any way, I’ve left it open this time as well for you to put in your own answers. Make them good though!
Our Poll Position question this week may be late, but it’s a doozy:
Discussion to follow! And you’ll note I have made it possible for you to add your own possible answer here. If the past is any indication, this freedom will last for about an hour before someone submits something so egregiously out of order I have to close that part off. But we’ll see.

So, yeah, I got confused as to what day it was yesterday and accidentally published “Bad Super Costume Wednesday” on Tuesday. These things happen when you work from home, time just blurs together. Now I’m having to publish Poll Position Tuesday on Wednesday instead, thereby ripping a hole in the space-time continuum.
Which fits, actually, because I’m going to be pulling from the entire history of super-hero comics for this week’s question. After contemplating Wolverine massacring hordes of screaming Teletubbies, I thought we should go a little more high-brow this time around:
Discussion after the jump.
I thought I would combine two of my favorite things — cartoons and violence — for this week’s Poll Position:
Obviously this has been inspired by the recent run of “Ewoks Vs.” sketches of the day. But why limit our scope to just cartoon-on-cartoon violence, when we can expand it into the world of super powers? I mean, if Ewoks can roast the likes of a Snarf or a Papa Smurf, surely Wolverine can do much, much worse.
After the jump I will (and I can’t believe I am writing this sentence) analyze the merits of Wolverine berserking his way through a mass of cartoon characters of various sorts.
With a special thanks to the HeroMachine Facebook group for most of these suggestions, our question of the week veers away from the various permutations of “Whose ass would Wolverine or Batman kick” to something more light-hearted:
I really wanted to open this up to let you add your own suggestions, but in the past that hasn’t gone very well — someone inevitably submits an offensive or wildly immature entry and I have to go in and delete it. But hey, that’s what comments are for! So let me put on my Very Serious Scholar face and take a look at the options.
(more…)
One of the more irritating customs of the comics genre is that nothing is permanent. If your favorite character or supporting cast member dies, just wait a few issues and he or she will be back, one way or another. They play the same trick with powers, taking them away and adding them over and over again, so if you follow a character long enough you end up in a constant fugue state of deja-vu, knowing you’ve seen that story arc before.

That remains true even for the Big Guy himself, Superman, who’s been through the death-no powers-new powers-back to the old powers loop plenty of times, particularly in the recent past. But I got to wondering what it would be like in a fantasy fantasy world where Superman permanently had one of his major powers deleted:
Thoughts after the jump!
Having worked our way from imaginary epic super-battles from land to air, could you doubt that sea was far away?
So slip on that swim suit and let’s get moist!

I’ve always wondered what it would be like if various fantastic objects made their way into the real world. And now, you get to wonder too!
Definitions and predilections after the jump.
Most of the “Versus” matchups we’ve thought about involved melee characters beating the snot out of each other with their fists. And I’m all for that. But the ranged specialists in comicdom have been sadly neglected, an oversight I aim to correct this week:
Discussion after the jump.